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Utopia in the Bowery ~ By MATTHEW SINGER ~

f punk was an egalitarian movement, one with no class system onstage or off, then there is perhaps no better visual representation of that ideal than Bad Brains: Live at CBGB 1982. Here are four black Rastafarians — outcasts on those points alone — playing righteous, hyper-speed hardcore for a mixed audience of shaven- headed white kids, mohawked African Americans, weirdoes of all shapes and stripes. And there’s the crowd, flooding the stage at the most beloved dingy piss-hole in the country, crawling over each other, commandeering

the mic, sometimes obscuring the band altogether. No barriers, no security guards — no separation, physical or metaphorical, between the group performing and the people watching. It’s a small, sweaty vision of utopia.

An ancient journey At the same time, the thing about Bad Brains was, unlike most of their Paddling to Limuw peers, they did stuff that was pretty much untouchable to the average fan; connects generations of no one could hear the bullet-train charge of “Pay To Cum” or the muscular local Chumash stomp of “Right Brigade” or any of the blistering leads provided by guitarist Dr. Know and seriously think, “Hey, I can do that.” Before Time will tell discovering the liberating recklessness of punk, these guys were jazz fusionists, and they took their chops with them when they crossed to the other side. With their considerable skills, they upped the ante on the meaning of “hardcore,” executing the genre’s key elements — speed, aggression, barely controlled chaos — with a taut precision none of their Heaven on earth contemporaries could hope to match. So while the Brains may have been Religious movement asks the ultimate symbol of punk’s inclusiveness, they also ripped the music churches to take on global from the hands of the happy amateurs playing it and tossed it light years warming ahead of them.

Legislation and litigation It’s the collision of that duality that makes Live at CBGB such a stunning for Santa Rosa Island document. The DVD draws from a four-night residency by the group at A new bill could ensure the the legendary New York rock club, sewing together the highlights into a island is closed to visitors single, incomparably explosive hour-long set. Crudely shot on two several months a year cameras, the film captures the feeling as much as it does the sights of sounds of traveling deep into the Bowery in the early ’80s. By then, the To serve the people idea of punk as a sea-changing social revolution was long dead; what Dennis Leary fights for remained at that point was simply a freak subculture festering below the truth, justice and the small- surface, full of geeks and misfits. From the moment Dr. Know’s squealing town way in his bid for Ojai pick scrapes and drummer Earl Hudson’s tension-building toms announce City Council the beginning of “Big Takeover,” those misfits are out in force, goose- stepping across the stage and competing for screen time with manic http://www.vcreporter.com/article.php?id=3845&IssueNum=92 11/1/2006 Utopia in the Bowery - Ventura County Reporter Page 2 of 3

Blogging into a vacuum frontman H.R. True to the form, director Richard Oretsky lenses the crowd with as much fascination as he does the band, occasionally focusing on one audience member for an entire song, sometimes filling the frame with a tangle of arms and legs. (The audience is certainly given more attention than bassist Daryl Jenifer, who’s the Where’s Waldo of this DVD.) Suspending the laws of economics for public But, honestly, there’s no mistaking the fans for the musicians, and not just policy because of their flailing dreadlocks. The band barrels through each song The idiocy of Proposition with furious propulsion, instrumental demigods among lowly punks. And 87 then there’s H.R. On record, his voice is an elastic wonder, capable of leaping from sonorous bellowing to high-pitched shrieking to rabid, feral Make You growling, often in a single phrase. Live, on barnburners like “Attitude” and “How Low Can a Punk Get,” you mostly just get the latter. It’s on Donation To blog or not to blog? their mellow, straight-forward reggae tracks, used here as buffers for the Today pandemonium, that he really gets to show off his instrument. When they all light back into scorchers such as “Riot Squad” and the “Anarchy in the UK”-aping “Redbone in the City,” the effect is jolting. Help Rebui Utopian? Eh, not really. Like most things, the notion of equality within Lives &

punk was mostly illusory. But it does look like a hell of a lot of fun, and Communities Hurricane Say Cheese! that’s just as important. Affected Sta 10-05-2006

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